Lady Midnight (After the Iratze)

Training

Clang!  The sharp sound of metal on metal rang through the training room as Julian's sword sailed through the air, knocked from his hand by Cortana.  He ducked and rolled as his parabatai thrust the blade down again in a long arc towards him.

Julian had been training with Emma for two hours, ever since she had woken him up by rolling over onto him in her sleep, and this was the first time she had disarmed him.  This put him in a pretty good mood, because Emma was a lot better with a sword than he was.  They had been joking and teasing each other the whole morning, each trying to get the other to mess up.

"Hey!"  He shouted indignantly as he dodged the strike.  "Be careful with that!  We already know it can cut through gear!  You trying to kill me!?"

"Yes, Julian, I want you to die," Emma said sarcastically.

"Well, geez, you don't have to be so blunt about it."  His eyes were sparkling.  "My own parabatai, trying to murder me." He put his hand to his chest in a theatrical gesture of shock.  He loved the times when Emma joked with him.  She had seemed different lately, more somber.  He could see a pain in her eyes sometimes, and he didn't know what it was.

It hurt that she was keeping something from him, but he didn't feel like he could ask about it.  For one she seemed to really be trying to hide it from him, and he wanted to respect her privacy.  Maybe it was about her boyfriend or something, and she just didn't feel comfortable talking to him about that.  If that's what it is, I don't want her to tell me, he thought. Because there was another reason he couldn't be mad at her for keeping secrets.  He was keeping one too.

"Too soon, Jules."

"Huh?"   Julian looked up.  He had been lost in thought for a moment, and Emma was no longer joking around.  "What's too soon?"

"Joking about your death... I just can't handle that yet.  It's only been a week..." There it was again, that sad, pained look in her eyes.  He just wanted to make it go away.

"Oh, come on, Em.  I'm fine now!  Good as new, thanks to you."  He took a few steps forward, closing the distance between them and lightly resting his hand on her shoulder.  "Do we have to think about that?"

She turned her gaze away from him and started muttering. "...You're the one who brought up Cortana cutting through gear..."

She was right, of course.  Last week when he had been injured by an arrow, she had had to cut off his gear with her favorite blade.  Unbidden, a flush of color rose in his cheeks at the memory, and his heart began to race.  This particular memory shouldn't make his feel this way.  It should make him somber too, considering he had almost died.  But the fear and the pain were not the things he remembered most vividly.  When he thought about that night, he remembered Emma.  He remembered how she looked when she took off her sweater and was wearing only a tank top.  The fact that it was stained red with his blood didn't make it look any less amazing on her.  Even in the midst of his agony, his heart had stuttered at the sight of her leaning over him, her golden hair falling from its braid onto her runed skin.  And when she had shifted, straddling him to get into position to draw the iratze...  He had let out an involuntary gasp, then.  She had asked if she was hurting him.  Of course, she wouldn't understand...  She would probably be appalled if she knew what he had really been feeling.  He was so afraid that she would guess how he felt after that night.  After all, he hadn't exactly hidden his feelings when she'd drawn the rune... He hadn't been able to control himself in that moment.  His hand had slid down, feeling the curve of her back and settling in the arch, pressing her against him.  'Don't stop,' he had pleaded involuntarily as her fingers raced over his chest, drawing the rune that had inexplicably worked when all the others had not.  He had felt so close to her in that moment, so intimate... Stop.  I have to stop thinking about this.

"Ok, ok, I'm sorry."  He nonchalantly brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.  It was a gesture he didn't even have to think about.  He had been doing it since they were about 5 years old.  So... why was she blushing now?  Did she know, somehow, what he had just been thinking about?

There was too much tension between them.  He had to do something.  He sprang forward, grabbing both of her shoulders and tackling her.  It had been a few days since they had practiced hand-to-hand combat without weaponry, and he thought some fighting would put them back into a comfortable routine.  The problem was that Emma had lightning-fast reflexes, so by the time they actually hit the ground she had twisted their bodies so that she now pinned him to the floor.  She grinned wickedly down at him, clearly proud of herself.

Well that backfired, he thought.  He had been trying to ease the tension between them, but he now felt like his body was on fire in all the places she was touching.  Her hands clamped firmly on his biceps, her knees on the floor, pressing in against his thighs, her abdomen just barely touching his.  He couldn't take it anymore.  He pushed her roughly off of him, got up and starting walking away toward the door of the training room.  He could feel his hands shaking and his entire face flushed and burning.

"Jules!  Where are you going?!"  Emma shouted at his retreating back from the floor where she had landed.

"I can't be around you right now!  I'm going crazy!"  He shouted without thinking and stormed out of the room.